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Worldbuilding: Conflict & Mistake

Those of you who read Slate Star Codex will probably have already seen this article; and those of you who don’t probably should read it, because I think it might be helpful in explaining the differences between Imperial “politics” and Earth politics as we know them, including – to pick up some recent threads on the Discord – local attitudes *there* to protest and suchlike.

Text continues now using terms from the article in question.

While it’s not a perfect analogy, one can see how an awful lot of differences come to pass by considering that while politics *here* , especially performative politics, tends to be heavily conflict-theory-driven, the Empire’s governance – and including here such not-governmental organizations as the Shadow Ministries and the Plurality and its COGs – to be almost entirely dominated by one strand or another of mistake theorist.

…who, admittedly, take the view that conflict theorists are mistaken to a degree that qualifies as dangerously, probably diagnosably, insane.

3 thoughts on “Worldbuilding: Conflict & Mistake”

First, there is a disturbing and unfortunate tendency for the conflict theorists to be right, if only because when conflict theorists on the opposing “team” get power they tend to do things that vindicate the first set’s suspicions, creating a vicious positive feedback loop.

Second, if I interpret this correctly, this conveniently casts some light on a question I was going to ask eventually about the local perspective on paranoia.

Yeah, but those chaps are picked up by the Guardians of Our Harmony and repaired, belike.
Paranoia, as a distortion of clear thinking, is not functional. Especially since, if you’re an Imperial, pronoia is actually accurate – there actually is a massive background conspiracy to make your life better.